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Academic Magic: Performance and the Communication of Fundamental Ideas

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Academic Magic: Performance and the Communication of Fundamental Ideas View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Huddersfield Repository Academic Magic: Performance and the Communication of Fundamental Ideas. Todd Landman University of Nottingham ABSTRACT This paper advances the case for how performance magic can be used as a larger medium for communicating fundamental ideas and addressing enduring questions. The paper begins with a stylized definition of performance magic as having a role for ‘disruption’ and ‘subversion’ in terms of audience perception of reality as well as an audience’s set of beliefs, predispositions, and ‘lifeworlds’. The section also engages with performance magicians as well as luminaries from the occult and Western esoteric traditions to illustrate the disruptive function of magicians broadly understood. The second part provides an overview of mentalism and mystery entertainment as a sub-genre within performance magic that is highly amenable to a more academic frame and mode of delivery. The third part outlines how key principles and effects from this sub-genre of performance magic can be applied to two broad areas of academic concern: (1) epistemology and the human condition, and (2) larger political and philosophical questions of morality, justice, rights, agency, and the power of the state. The paper concludes with a short summary and implications for the future of performance magic that moves beyond mere entertainment. KEYWORDS academic magic, mentalism, mind reading, epistemology, human rights, language, philosophy, morality, justice, disruption ‘Landman is an example of how the performance of “magic” has been transformed in the last decade…far removed from circus-style trickery of sawing women in half.’ Prospect Magazine, May 2012, p. 79 ‘Magic is a body of knowledge that, for one reason or another, has not yet been fully investigated or confirmed by the other arts and sciences." Isaac Bonewits, Real Magic 1979, p. 33 INTRODUCTION For centuries, magicians have primarily occupied an outsider position within society. Whether these are real magicians engaged in magical practices and rituals or performance magicians seeking to entertain public audiences (and these categories may not be mutually exclusive), the subject position of a magician is one of an outsider who ‘knows things’ and who can ‘do things’, which invite curiosity from audiences, general onlookers, acquaintances, family and friends. The work of magicians can also cause fear, suspicion, derision and ostracism, as well as allegations of and prosecutions for heresy. History is replete with examples of ‘scholar magicians’ who are those individuals engaged in deep philosophical research, reasoning, and writing along with a metaphysical and epistemological continuum that stretches from the purely rational to the deeply esoteric. Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola (1463-1494), for example developed a syncretic philosophy comprising ideas and insights from Platonism, Neoplatonism, Aristotelianism, Hermeticism and Kabbalah (Szönyi, 2015). John Dee (1527-1608) studied magic, science and religion, including the development of the Mercator projection map of the world, astrological readings for Queen Elizabeth I, and a period of scrying and communing with angels (Woolley 2002; Parry 2015). Even Sir Isaac Newton, father of modern physics dedicated his latter years of study to alchemy and the existence of ether (White, 2010). These are examples of scholars who were interested in science, philosophy, religion and magic, while street magicians, conjurors, cunning folk, and lesser known practitioners often combined pure deception with a magical worldview to offer entertainment as well as ‘healing’ and other services to local communities (Davies, 2007; Wilby, 2005). For this community there are blurred distinctions between deception and genuine commitment to a magical worldview, but each contained a strong element of performance. The publication of Reginald Scot’s (1584 [1989]) The Discoverie of Witchcraft was the first book to expose the use of deception to create magical effects aligned with witchcraft. While the book was published in part to protest the treatment of suspected witches, a practice that Scot believed was irrational, immoral, and un-Christian, today it is heralded as the first magic book among performance magicians featuring for example in the internal decorations of the headquarters of The Magic Circle in London. The advent of ‘mentalism’, a sub-genre of performance magic that combines the deceptive methods of conjurers and stage magicians with linguistic techniques and other forms of deception to produce the appearance of psychic phenomena, mind reading, and other forms of ‘magic of the mind’ provided a real opportunity for more ‘lecture’ style performances grounded in psychology, history, spiritualism, philosophy, and other subject areas (Corinda, 1968; Landman, 2013). Mentalists claim to possess certain psychic and mental powers, particular psychological techniques for ‘knowing’ people (body language, influence, etc.), or act as ‘agents of empowerment’ who provide a means for audience members to achieve inexplicable effects, outcomes and impact. Popular mentalists have included Joseph Dunninger, Alexander, Theodore Annemann, Maurice Fogel, Chan Canasta, David Berglas, Max Maven, Derren Brown, Richard Osterlind, and Luke Jermay, among others. As a performance magician, I have modelled my persona as a ‘scholar magician’ in which I advocate a position of ‘metaphysical plurality’ and commit to nothing in terms of real explanation, disclaimer, or other means of drawing a separation between reality and performance. Rather, I seek to explore fundamental ideas drawn from science, philosophy, history, politics, art, and music through the medium of magic and mentalism to create a world of ‘theatrical mentalism’ or ‘mystery entertainment’. I am the well-travelled polymath and a modern ‘renaissance man’ who asks his audience to step into a world of ideas and the ‘shared community of human minds’ (Tallis, 2011) evocative of the Jungian ‘collective unconscious’ and the mystical collection of the ‘Akashic records’. For this world, all explanations are possible and none are claimed as superior; an idea very much influenced by Paul Feyerabend’s (1975) Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge. In this article, I draw on my own experiences of crafting myself as a scholar magician to advance the proposition that performance magic provides an incredibly flexible, adaptable, and compelling medium for communicating fundamental ideas of social concern. In combining the ideas of the ‘the pledge’, ‘the turn’, and ‘the prestige’ for structuring magical effects with the idea of ‘increasing implausibility’ (Hickok, 2002) across the duration of a stage performance, I have been able to create a series of thematic stage shows that are grounded in the exploration of a linked set of ideas and concerns that have hitherto been far removed from the world of magic. To advance this proposition, the article first discusses the role of magic as a disruptive and subversive force for modern audiences, and the role of the magician as outsider. Second, it provides a brief overview of mentalism and mystery entertainment as a sub-genre within performance magic that is highly amenable to a more academic frame and mode of delivery. Third, it outlines how key principles and effects from this sub-genre of performance magic can be applied to two broad areas of academic concern: (1) epistemology and the human condition, and (2) larger political and philosophical questions of morality, justice, rights, agency, and the power of the state. The article concludes with a short summary and implications for the future of performance magic that moves beyond mere entertainment, or in the words of one my audience members, magic that ‘educates, entertains, and baffles, all at the same time’. DISRUPTION AND SUBVERSION Magic can function as a significant means to disrupt and subvert an audience’s sense of reality, and in some cases, their fundamental set of beliefs about how the world ‘works’, as well as deeper religious and metaphysical concerns. At a performance at the Regent Theatre in Ipswich in East Anglia from UK mentalist Derren Brown, I overheard audience members discussing his final mind reading act in his show where he had his eyes blindfolded and head wrapped with a large turban, but nevertheless was able to discern and provide answers to questions sealed in envelopes and held in a large glass bowl on stage. Despite overtly claiming that he had no psychic ability whatsoever, the audience members muttered on their way out ‘I don’t care what he said, he is the real deal’; suggesting that Derren Brown does in fact possess psychic power and really can read minds. Over two thousand audience members roared to their feet as he entered the stage, and thousands more have flocked to his shows intrigued by the possibility of mind control, mind reading, and hypnosis-based feats of manipulation. Over the centuries, performance magicians like Derren Brown and hundreds of others have performed signature pieces that simply astound, baffle, and in many ways unsettle their audiences. There is the Robert Houdin’s magical orange tree illusion in the 19th Century, Harry Houdini’s vanishing elephant in the early 20th Century, Maurice Fogel’s death-defying bullet catch, David Berglas’ blindfolded car drive, David Copperfield’s flying illusion, and countless other stage illusions and public stunts
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